SPORTS OF THE TIMES; Baggage, New and Old, Arrives at Citi Field

By GEORGE VECSEY

Published: April 9, 2011

The Mets' first home opener took place on April 13, 1962. It was a Friday, but Mets fans already know that.

That bitter yet heartwarming day lingers in the Mets' DNA. Even the looming shadow of Bernard L. Madoff cannot dilute the hope and realism that Mets fans have been carrying since the very first home opener, two ballparks ago. Somehow or other, despite the wretched beginnings, the Mets now have a 31-19 home-opener record after Friday's 6-2 mauling by Washington.

The Mets carry so much baggage, not just the avuncular creep who swindled the owners and a lot of other people. They also carry the burden of an underperforming franchise in a city that never sleeps, or gets over anything, yet still has a soft spot for eccentricity.

As chilly as the day was, baseball was officially back, in all its three-ring-circus glory. The Yanks and the Red Sox were beating each other's brains out in Fenway. Barry Bonds's future was in the hands of a jury in San Francisco. And Manny Ramirez flunked another drug test and decided to retire from Tampa Bay. Manny's long-ball compatriots will no doubt thank him profusely for reminding everybody that the home runs of the past generation will always be suspect.

This jaded feeling about sluggers is a far cry from the loopy optimism that accompanied the Mets on that far nastier day in 1962. Snow showers scudded across the Harlem River as 12,447 fans showed up to inspect the historic Polo Grounds and its improbable tenants.

''They had all those great players, but they were finished,'' recalled Ralph Kiner, 88, the great slugger who broadcast that first home opener in 1962 and threw out the ceremonial first ball on Friday.

Kiner, who hit 369 homers in 10 seasons with Pittsburgh, the Chicago Cubs and Cleveland, has seen fire and he's seen rain. He has also seen Marvelous Marv Throneberry and the seeing-eye grounder in 1986 by Mookie Wilson, now a coach, who caught his toss on Friday.

Everything the Mets are today -- a team trying to be respectable, while dealing with current scandal and past blips of glory -- dates to that first spring. The Mets had lined up Casey Stengel, who had worked for the Brooklyn Dodgers, the New York Giants and the New York Yankees before the Mets, in their wisdom, brought him in to manage shopworn stars and rejects.

April doesn't do many favors in New York. Robert L. Teague, writing in The New York Times, described ''murky skies, autumn temperatures and a relentless drizzle'' and described the umpire Bill Jackowski cleaning off home plate with a white towel rather than the normal whisk broom.

The Mets lost that first game, 4-3, with a battery of Roadblock Jones and Joe Ginsberg, neither of whom would last into warm weather.

In that familiar tone that charmed millions of fans on ''Kiner's Korner,'' his postgame show on WOR-TV/Channel 9, Kiner recalled, ''The Mets lost their first nine games and were nine and a half games behind'' -- not easy to do. ''Now you ask how that could happen? Because the Pirates won 10 straight.''

The Mets lost 120 games in 1962, then lost their first eight in 1963, and in 1964 they lost four straight as they moved to a new home, which would be called Shea Stadium.

One of the first visitors to the new place was present in the current ballpark on Friday. That was Jeff Wilpon, 49, the team president.

''I was there in utero,'' Wilpon said Friday. His mother, Judy, had worked for the Continental League, which never came into being but produced the Mets. So Judy Wilpon was present at the groundbreaking.

What do you remember about the groundbreaking? somebody asked.

''It was warm,'' Wilpon said.

It was most decidedly not warm Friday in the new ballpark, which some of us still want to call New Shea.

Kiner still does as many as 25 games a year for SNY but noted, ''I'd like to do more but I signed a contract as an independent contractor and by law I can only do 25.''

He saw the Mets play seven times in Florida, and said he wished Jose Reyes could steal 78 bases, the way he did once. ''The only time he runs now is on a 3-2 count,'' Kiner said. ''My feeling is, if he could live up to his potential, they could have a good year. But the odds of that are slim and none. They don't have a good pitcher who can win 20 games.''

Reyes struck out with two men in scoring position in the seventh on Friday, looking for all the world like a latter-day Elio Chacon. Then the Mets' relief pitching fell apart in the eighth and the new place was three-quarters empty near the end. The weather will eventually improve -- but the Mets, not necessarily.

PHOTOS: After stepping on second to force Michael Morse, Jose Reyes threw to first to complete a double play on a ball hit by Rick Ankiel. (PHOTOGRAPH BY BARTON SILVERMAN/THE NEW YORK TIMES); Fans did their best to keep warm during the Mets' 6-2 home-opening loss to the Nationals, but Bobby Parnell felt the heat. He gave up a hit, two walks and a run when the Nationals broke open the game in the eighth inning. (PHOTOGRAPHS BY BARTON SILVERMAN/THE NEW YORK TIMES; SUZY ALLMAN FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES)